A Labour government in Australia will see to the significant reduction of the application fee for the temporary sponsored parent visa and lift the 15,000 visa cap placed on the program.

Applications for sponsors of this visa program opened last week. Visa applications, on the other hand, will be opened from the 1st of July this year. This is possible because the coalition government fulfilled its promise before the federal election of 2016 to introduce a visa program that will permit parents permanent residents and citizens in Australia to stay in the country for five years.

The visa program, however, received a lot of criticism over its high visa fees of $5,000 and $10,000 for the 3-year and 5-year visas respectively.

Shayne Newman, the Shadow Immigration Minister and Chris Bowen, the Shadow Treasurer, will announce the new policy for the parent visa on Monday.

The policy will remove the unfair and insensitive condition of the visa to allow each household sponsor only one set of parents at a time. A Labor government will also lift the 15,000 annual caps imposed on the visa program.

Parents will be able to apply for renewal while still in the country

The new labour policy will also not require parents to apply for a visa renewal from outside of Australia. The current regulations demand that they leave the country before they can apply for a visa renewal.

David Coleman, Australia’s Immigration Minister, had earlier said that the visa fee was “reasonable.”

He thinks that the government should have a sustainable program for migration that will be funded not only by taxpayers but by the people as well.

Coleman went further to say that the provisions and regulations of this visa program are very much different from the one promised in 2016. The one promised in 2016 was not supposed to have a visa cap placed on it, and the sponsors would have had to pay a refundable bond.

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